The players shouldn't have knelt

It was right to respect their protest

The NFL made a huge mistake when it allowed politics to poison football by letting players kneel before games, holds Lauren DeBellis Appell of Fox News. It has suffered financially because of this. Twenty-two teams saw their stadium attendance fall. Even more significantly, TV ratings have fallen by 9% during the season. Millions of people preferred not to watch football because of the kneeling. Fifty-two percent of Americans disagree with the protest. The athletes should have used their star power to make real change elsewhere. Football should be about uniting people, not dividing them. The NFL shouldn’t have allowed players to kneel.

Respecting players’ right to freedom of speech and allowing them to kneel was the right choice for the NFL, argues an Opinion Editorial on NorthJersey.com. While it may have hurt the organization’s bottom line, it shed light on a hugely important social issue. Politics has soaked all parts of American life, even sports. Football stadiums were the right outlet to raise awareness. Critics of the movement should direct their anger at addressing the real issue, injustice. Their reaction came because they personally disagreed with players kneeling, when protest is in fact highly patriotic. The NFL was right to permit it.